Abstract

me of the practitioners of geotechnical
engineering tend to confuse Ground with
Soil. It is not just semantics but the terms have d
eeper technical and philosophical implications. Soi
l
is a material which can be handled, felt, seen, sme
lt, tasted, and tested in small to medium size
samples while ‘Ground’ is an entity that exists in-
situ. Just as the adage, ‘The total is more than th
e
sum of the individual parts’, predicting the behavi
or of ground from the so-called properties
measured on samples collected from the field is muc
h more complex and involves judgment.
Ground is an intricate natural entity very similar
to ‘Humans’ and exhibits behavioral responses
rather than merely possess properties like other en
gineering materials. Humans have organs and
traits such as being jovial, sad, friendly, angry,
misanthropic, etc. but do not have properties. Thei
r
behavioral responses depend on genetics, environmen
t in which they grow, personality they
develop and to impetus they experience. Similarly,
the genetics of ground is defined by its
formation (alluvial, marine, residual, colluvial, a
eolin, etc.) depending upon how physiogamy forms
the deposit. Ground, one tends to believe, is a sol
id mass on which structures are built, becomes
suddenly a fluid under specific aggravating circums
tances such as consisting loose saturated sand
with small amount of fines but subjected to seismic
activity of medium to high intensity. On the
other hand, a river in flood can erode the ground b
y removing particles by its high velocity leading
to scour. Slopes on which civilizations thrive, bec
ome unstable and sometimes even catastrophic
under heavy rainfall, coupled with human activities
of deforestation, cutting/steepening of slopes,
saturating it by ignorance or callousness, etc. The
paper presents a new paradigm that emphasizes
the need to visualize Ground, not just as a materia
l but rather an entity, and view Geotechnical
Engineering comprehensively, beyond a mechanistic s
tandpoint.